Single Ladies (Put A Riff On It)

[koganbot]

Something I posted on a comment thread here, about the Turnage-Beyoncé thing:

Just a point in regard to whether one "got" the reference to "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" [not an issue for me, 'cause I discovered the Turnage piece through one of the mashups, and wouldn't bet on my having recognized the tune otherwise, though probably would have been saying to myself, "this reminds me of something; what the hell is it?"]: loads of melodies sound like other melodies, some deliberately, some from the songwriters' unconscious, some coincidentally, etc. I often miss the obvious references and then hear connections that aren't there, or when I do hear I have no idea what's intended and what isn't. And just to give an example, I've probably heard Hole's "Celebrity Skin" and Ashlee Simpson's "Surrender" over a hundred times each, and I know that Ashlee has covered "Celebrity Skin" in concert, and I saw the episode of Ashlee's reality show where she and her label president, Jordan Schur, are discussing "Surrender" and Schur says that it makes him think of Hole's "Celebrity Skin," my assumption being that he's correctly inferring from the sound that Courtney Love is a huge inspiration for Ashlee, yet I didn't realize, until just a few days ago when I ran into a YouTube mashup that showed it, that "Surrender" uses the riff from "Celebrity Skin." So... well it's not a contest, to see who gets it. No one gets it all.

[Worth clicking the link to see my comment on someone's odd assumptions concerning the authorship of "Single Ladies."]

[Also, though I love "Celebrity Skin," "Surrender" is one of my least favorite Ashlee tracks, Ashlee's most triumphant Hole-style song being "I Am Me."]

[EDIT: I'm speaking loosely when I say "uses the riff," since I don't mean "plays the riff" but "plays something similar to the riff that was almost certainly based on the riff," the rhythm and the style of power-chording being identical but the notes not. I talk a little more about this in the comment thread.]

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I would probably swap out "incommensurable" for hard. Good music writing provides the context to understand not only the terminology itself, but also the impact of the terminology. I can easily imagine learning the phrase "vamp till ready" precisely because it was used well to describe or evaluate or analyze a piece of music!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i think frank's question had been is there in equivalent in the arts to what "incommensurable" means in Kuhn's account of the sciences -- well, I'm inclined to say no (or at least, not that I know of) to what question...

But I do think there are uncrossable gulfs when it comes to professional techniques and the language that comes with them: in the sense that I think people who can read music can't hear music as if they didn't read it; there's a whole (basically synaesthetic) layer of logic been uploaded to the level of muscle memory, which can't be bracketed back out

what i don't know is the effect of this -- i associate it with the difficulty of writing about music, but maybe i shouldn't (i think i'm right to: but i'm not sure why i think i'm right)

[koganbot]

Xpost! I think there are plenty of equivalents in the arts to what "incommensurable" means in Kuhn's account of the sciences; there just aren't equivalents to paradigms, in the sense of "social practices with enough shared understandings to get everyone on the same page" (as opposed to social practices that don't get us on the same page, e.g. music criticism).

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

maybe the social practice of processing* all music via note-and-staff would be a paradigm? i think there's a pretty tight relationship between its use and the start and end of a particular -- eefinable -- era in composed music: from the introduction of note-and-staff (in the 1500s?) and its breakdown in the 1920s (when people started writing music that couldn't be notated (or required non-agreed-on variants on orthodox notation: the futurists, for example; or the microtone composers)

*you didn't get to be a part of this sub-world of music unless you could read note-and-staff: composition meant writing on note-and-staff; and from pretty early on the music was actually unperformable without its presence -- it LITERALLY got everyone onto the same page!

i also think that harold bloom is offering up something that *might* function as a paradigm in his "anxiety of influence" argument: that this kind of oedipal relationship* is not only present in all the poetry he considers worthy of the name; its central to its practice

(obviously his claim is -- to say the least -- controversial, since it requires casting out lots of writing as not poetry the way he means the team which most other people think IS poetry: in other words, it ISN;T a paradigm bcz half the poets on his list would dispute it; but if he were RIGHT maybe it would be?)

*it's not just a passive or descriptive relationship, in his account; in its active placing of yourself in relationship; and he has seven technical terms of art to describe the stages of the process of this active placing (which i can never remember)

[koganbot]

No, I want to be really strict on what we're saying is equivalent to a Kuhnian paradigm/disciplinary matrix, otherwise you're not going to understand his concept of "paradigm." Also, if we are strict in this way, then we can employ the notion effectively in understanding practices that don't have such Kuhnian paradigms because we can use the concept to highlight how these practices differ from the ones with actual paradigms, hence, these practices silhouetted against the background of the hard sciences, we can see highlight details from these practices.

Remember, Kuhn developed the notion of paradigm to understand how it was that science was able to achieve things that the social sciences in particular couldn't: how the scientists could perceive anomalies, know when an idea had been refuted or agree when a questioned had been answered, and periodically overthrow its basic ideas in astonishing reformations of thought. It doesn't do to extend the idea to other discourses that don't achieve these things, since then the concept loses its explanatory power.

And the Bloom example is exactly what I mean. Anxiety of Influence isn't a shared paradigm unless everybody in the social practice - everybody - buys into it. You're not a poet if you're not doing it - not, Harold Bloom, one man, doesn't consider you a poet worthy of the name if you're not doing it, but the entire community engaged in the enterprise doesn't consider you a poet, and you, the poets, can tell the poets from the nonpoets, just as the evolutionary biologist can push to the side the person who doesn't believe in natural selection. Whereas the fact that we get into methodological and taxonomic arguments about who's a poet and what poets are doing is an emphatic reason for saying that poets don't share a disciplinary matrix, or ever have.

[koganbot]

how the scientists could perceive anomalies, know when an idea had been refuted or agree when a questioned had been answered, and periodically overthrow its basic ideas in astonishing reformations of thought

Hmmm. The "its" in that sentence has no antecedent. How about "an periodically overthrow a discipline's basic ideas, achieving astonishing reformations of thought in doing so.

Grr

[koganbot]

"and periodically overthrow..."

So, to collate all my corrections

[koganbot]

"we can see highlight details from these practices"

"know when an idea had been refuted or agree when a questioned had been answered, and periodically overthrow its a discipline's basic ideas, achieving in astonishing reformations of thought in doing so."

[koganbot]

maybe the social practice of processing all music via note-and-staff would be a paradigm?

This is a more interesting question, though "paradigm" still seems to be the wrong word; you can make music in the seven-note scale (even if it's music that's not that complex) without using note and staff, or knowing how to, and you can lift a Chopin melody and give it a blues reading, styles penetrating each other (different scales, compromises between scales, like the blues).

My positive point in relation to what you're trying to do in these posts is that we can use the sense of "incommensurability" or consensus breakdown, as happens between incompatible scientific paradigms or in a paradigm that's undergoing revolution, to help understand incompatibilities and misunderstandings and breakdowns in general, among endeavors that never achieved a paradigm. When I say "Never achieved a paradigm" I don't mean "Has no features in common."

another correction

[koganbot]

as happens between incompatible scientific paradigms or in a paradigm that's undergoing revolution

I should have said, "in a discipline that's undergoing revolution" (since in a revolution an old paradigm gets displaced)

[koganbot]

Actually, rereading this, I realize:

(1) There's an ambiguity - and perhaps some confusion - in your statement "i also think that harold bloom is offering up something that *might* function as a paradigm in his 'anxiety of influence' argument," since you're not saying who would apply this potential paradigm, i.e., whether it's the critics who apply it, whether it's the poets, or whether it's both. To make a quick and dirty analogy, all living creatures are subject to natural selection, but for it to be a paradigm, only evolutionary biologists need to understand and basically agree on it and apply it in their work. It's the biologists, not all living creatures, that apply the paradigm. You can't say that all living creatures share the paradigm, because that would mean that all living creatures understand and basically agree on natural selection, and apply it in their work.

(2) So, when you get the time, I'd like to know what your understandings of "incommensurability" and "paradigm" are ("paradigm," in this instance, in the sense "disciplinary matrix"). In order to communicate, we don't necessarily have to agree on how we use those terms, but we do each have to understand how the other uses them.

In any event, as a potential paradigm itself, Kuhn's Structure Of Scientific Revolutions can get us on the same page in our understanding of the differences between a Galilean and an Aristotelian. But this doesn't get Galileo and Aristotle on the same page. Or, at least, the page is ours, not theirs, and it doesn't close the gap between their paradigms or eliminate the "incommensurability" between them.

The reason I put "incommensurability" in quotation marks is that the "incommensurability" applies to only one particular "measure." E.g., Kuhn says that where a Galilean would see a pendulum, an Aristotelian would see constrained fall. And the "incommensurability" arises because one particular measure - comparing the swinging stone to "reality" or to "the data" or to "the facts" or to "the evidence" or to "what's really there" - is not at hand. There's no such third thing (evidence, data, reality, facts) to look at.* There's no datum or sense impression etc. that would contradict either "pendulum" or "constrained fall," hence neither sense impressions nor data can be bases for choosing between "pendulum" or "constrained fall." (This doesn't mean that we have no good reasons for choosing "pendulum" over "constrained fall," or that "pendulum" can't be right and "constrained fall" wrong, though Kuhn would argue that there's no single criterion that can occupy the spot vacated by "the facts." But that's a whole other discussion.)

*It doesn't follow that there is no reality. Rather, reality is what we call our conclusion as to what is really there. But it - reality - is not in our sight prior to the conclusion, isn't helping us arrive at that conclusion. To think otherwise is to make what I call the basic teleological mistake, to say that an effect can cause its cause, that an outcome or conclusion can cause what leads to it, that the future can cause the past. (Not that everyone agrees that this is a mistake, but I think the antiteleologists win the argument.)